1296A Dielectric Interface System

System Overview

Analyzing low conductivity, low loss materials stretches the capabilities of even the best impedance analyzers. Used alone, they lack the sensitivity required for accurate measurements, especially at low frequencies.

The 1296A Dielectric Interface overcomes these limitations to give you fast, accurate and repeatable impedance measurements over 12 decades of frequency, yielding valuable insights into the characteristics of a wide range of materials, including polymers, ceramics, ion conductors, dielectrics, piezo/ferroelectrics, display materials etc. Coupled with easy-to-use software, a 1296A-based system takes care of experimental technique and lets you concentrate on interpreting the results.

The 1296A enhances the capabilities of Solartron Analytical’s renowned 1260A and 1255A FRAs to cope with ultra-low current and capacitance levels experienced in testing dielectric materials, enabling:

Highly accurate reference capacitors are built in to 1296A for sample/reference testing, or you can choose to use an external reference, offering unrivaled flexibility to meet almost every measurement need. Support for temperature and DC controllers is integral to the measurement software, further increasing the scope for materials analysis.

Defining Dielectrics
Many materials have the properties of low conductance (high impedance) and low loss. They are often referred to as dielectrics, although many materials not normally considered as dielectrics exhibit these properties.

One popular technique for analyzing such materials is Impedance Spectroscopy - measuring the electrical impedance over a range of frequencies. The impedance is related to the conductivity and capacitance of the material, and these parameters can in turn be related to the molecular activity of the material.

When an alternating voltage is applied to a dielectric sample, some energy is stored by the capacitance, and some is dissipated by the resistance effects.

The resulting current in the sample will exhibit a phase lag, δ. In materials research, the capacitance effect is known as the permittivity (or dielectric constant) ε’, and the resistive effect as dielectric loss, ε”. Tan δ, the dissipation factor equals ε”/ε’.

In materials where ε” is very small and ε’ large, the resolution of tan δ becomes critical if an accurate measurement is to be made. The 1296A overcomes this by taking a reference measurement on precision capacitors which are automatically substituted for the sample; a second measurement is made, this time on the sample itself. The two results are used to derive an accurate measurement of the permittivity of the material - in effect, the first measurement is used to eliminate the effects of extraneous capacitance.